


Refractions

by elephant_eyelash



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: AU, Angst, Challenge Response, F/M, Fluff, Trigger warning: abortion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-31
Updated: 2012-05-31
Packaged: 2017-11-06 09:58:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/417563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elephant_eyelash/pseuds/elephant_eyelash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In response to a tumblr challenge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Refractions

**Angst**   
  
He curls his fingers listlessly around the leather, looping it as a maiden would do with golden thread. In the distance a sound of a dog barking towards the sky, but apart from that all he can hear is silence (a vacuum caused by the crashing thunder and rain from that night, nothing more than frightened noise). He has done everything to bury that noise into the earth, but even the song of the steel is not enough. He approaches the tree he has selected, a scarred old oak where he imagines the gnarled old face of the Hound. Tightening the strips around his knuckles (he had relished the early scars, but the men had been talking) he curves his fist forward and screams.   
  
**AU**   
  
“Look I don’t give a shit about Sonic Youth.” He says, smacking his chewing gum. You couldn’t scream to Sonic Youth, couldn’t work out all the fucking shit in your system. Because that was what he liked. Gigs where you all you could taste was sweat and blood and beer and piss and everything was just stark shadow and light, never fucking grey.    
  
She rolled her eyes. “You’re twenty and still read the NME. Your opinion is fucking invalid, allright?” She said, in her Highgate accent-she-tried-to-mask-as-Camden-twang- so people- wouldn’t- realise -how- posh- she- really- was. The girl who skipped sixth form to go to Brick Lane with him and eat Chicken Cottage but who at the end of the day always went home to Mummy and fucking Daddy whilst he sat in his semi-independent watching the ceiling and smoking weed waiting for when they’d next meet and feeling like he was going fucking insane with how strange and ugly and vivid and beautiful his life was with her in it.   
  
He blushed; because even underneath the plaid shirts and the thick, cheap looking eyeliner she was still something else, something distant and refined; and told himself she wouldn’t even appreciate his mix-tape anyway.   
  
**Hurt/comfort**  
  
Her hands grasp at the roots of the heart tree.  
  
He tells himself this is good, that they were right to cleanse the(ir) baby from her, but seeing her like this makes him wish for anything else. The Septa had told them it would hurt, that the blood would come thick, but he had never imagined it like this. If this kills her he will find the Septa and drown her, he thinks, in this place, under the sight of Arya’s Gods. For a long time he is still, detached, but that is broken when he sees the blood on the snow.   
  
He positions her between his legs, her laboured breaths hitting against his chest. He brings her head against her chest and whispers all the beautiful things he can think of but has never told her; her smile, the nape of her neck, the thin skin of her wrists; until the bleeding stops and she falls asleep, breaths soft against the chill.   
  
**Friendship**  
  
He turns his eyes up to the ceiling, trying his best to keep his mind focussed on the fact that no, there wasn’t a naked Arya behind that screen. Because she may not care for her dignity, sees nothing alluring in her shape but just muscle and skin and tendons (unlike him, who saw summer and honey and milk), but he does. He is a knight, and a knight respects a lady. Because that was what she saw now. This was the metamorphosis he had helped begin by bringing her home.   
  
She eventually appeared in her new dress, shy and beautiful, and more distant than ever.   
  
**Romance**  
  
One night in bed she tells Sansa that real romance isn’t flowers or songs. Quietly she thinks of the many times Gendry would pluck off an apple from a tree and throw it towards her, but not before checking it for worms or rot. Romance didn’t bloom in war, despite the songs of rescued maidens and knights in armour that shone in the sunlight, but something different.   
  
Her Gendry knew no songs, but he knew how to help keep her alive.   
  
**Fluff**  
  
His eyes strain to see the words, to see the curves of ink make become something he can hold, something that has shape and meaning. She lay next to him, becoming impatient. Why did he even want to read? Arya had never seen the point. Gendry was strong and had a skill. She watched his mouth move along to phantom syllables and thought about kissing him, but he’d just shove her off and tell her this was important in that stubborn voice of his. So instead she waited.   
  
With Sam he practiced his writing. He made crude, clumsy shapes in his book  (“iron”, “sword” “helmet”) like a child. It was only when one day he left his book that Sam inspected it, flipping to the back page, where the word “Arya” was written in a faint wisp of ink.


End file.
